The first time was in the 1980s.
In an interview days before the trial ended, Iti said he ran a course in the 1980s as part of an Internal Affairs programme set up in the Muldoon era that concentrated on potential gang areas, including Ruatoki, where he grew up.
"So our job, we're like the firemen to pull the so-called naughty people off the streets, and so I did this bush training. I did what they called seven days' hiking in the bush, a lot of that to use the firearms, first aid, all of that sort of ... basic training.
"So I rung my brother up, he was in the army, he was in the stores department. I said, 'Bro, have you got any greens, uniform, kids love that kind of stuff.' So I bought a whole lot of uniforms and dressed them up ... and off we go for seven days to Maungapohatu [a Tuhoe sacred mountain]."
One day, his employer gave him a letter that he said had been sent from the Whakatane police.
"They were concerned about Mr Iti running guerrilla camps in the Urewera. That was way back in the '80s."
They threw the letter away and heard nothing more.
Iti says that when he teaches about weapons - be they guns or taiaha - he also teaches that this knowledge is not to be used for purposes such as revenge.
The idea he had plans to kill was untrue and "of course" he found such allegations hurtful.
"I don't mind taking the rap for some stuff ... but not this kind of bulls . . . That's not me.
"So there was no plan, I mean that's the most [expletive] ridiculous thing I heard in my life, that they were there to make a plan and go and kill somebody, to create havoc in our community.
"Where the hell did they get that idea from? ... They just create it in their own cuckoo bloody brains, an assumption, they spy on me, they assume things, they look from a distance."
Iti is nearing 60 years old and says he has been in and out of court for 40 of those years on charges as varied as discharging a firearm - he shot the New Zealand flag on a Tuhoe marae during a Waitangi Tribunal hearing - and occupying a railway station. He has won a few and lost a few but says he has never been sentenced to jail.
On the day of the raids, the police trained the red dots of their weapons on him.
"I got thrown down on the ground and they put the gun at the back of my head and they put the dog on to me at the same time."
But if they had called and asked him to go to the police station, he says he would have.
"It's the normal thing I'm used to. I say, 'Am I under arrest, what are the charges, can you show it to me, sweet, then I'll jump in the car with you.' I know the ropes; I've had 40 years of it." -
- Catherine Masters
